Across the Zodiac eBook

“Only,” he answered, “in the case
of the insane. When the doctors are satisfied
that a lunatic cannot be cured, an inquest is held;
and if the medical verdict be approved, he is quietly
and painlessly dismissed from existence. Logically,
of course, the same principle should be applied to
all incurable disease; and I suspect—­indeed
I know—­that it is applied when the household
have become weary, and the patient is utterly unable
to protect himself or appeal to the law. But
the general application of the principle has been successfully
resisted, on the ground that the terror it would cause,
the constant anxiety and alarm in which men would
live if the right of judging when life had become
worthless to them were left to others, would far outweigh
any benefit which might be derived from the legalised
extinction of existences which had become a prolonged
misery; and such cases, as I have told you, are very
rare among us. A case of hopeless bodily suffering,
not terminating very speedily in death, does not occur
thrice a year among the whole population of the planet,
except through accident. We have means of curing
at the outset almost all of those diseases which the
observance for hundreds of generations of sound physical
conditions of life has not extirpated; and in the worst
instances our anaesthetics seldom fail to extinguish
the sense of pain without impairing intellect.
Of course, any one who is tired of his life is at
liberty to put an end to it, and any one else may assist
him. But, though the clinging to existence is
perhaps the most irrational of all those purely animal
instincts on emancipation from which we pride ourselves,
it is the strongest and the most lasting. The
life of most of my countrymen would be to me intolerable
weariness, if only from the utter want, after wealth
is attained, of all warmer and less isolated interest
than some one pet scientific pursuit can afford; and
yet more from the total absence of affection, family
duties, and the various mental occupations which interest
in others affords. But though the question whether
life is worth living has long ago been settled among
us in the negative, suicide, the logical outcome of
that conviction, is the rarest of all the methods
by which life is terminated.”

“Which seems to show that even in Mars logic
does not always dominate life and prevail over instinct.
But what is the most usual cause of death, where neither
disease nor senility are other than rare exceptions?”

“Efflux of time,” Esmo replied with an
ironical smile. “That is the chief fatal
disease recognised by our physicians.”

“And what is its nature?”

“Ah, that neither I nor any other physician
can tell you. Life ’goes out,’ like
a lamp when the materials supplying the electric current
are exhausted; and yet here all the waste of which
physic can take cognisance is fully repaired, and
the circuit is not broken.”